Waiting for Teddy Williams

by Howard Frank Mosher

  The big courtroom, where Gypsy was being arraigned for poaching, was one of Ethan’s favorite places in the village. Over the crackling broadcast, the old-fashioned propeller-blade ceiling fans made a steady, comforting hum. The courtroom was cool in summer and warm on cold days like today, the fans keeping the heated air from collecting up under the stamped-tin ceiling, the tall steam radiators clanking and hissing and grumbling. E.A. couldn’t count the times he’d been here with Gypsy Lee. She was forever in court answering one minor charge or another, and for years she’d brought him along. Their court appearances had become an integral part of his homeschooling. They even had a special textbook, How to Represent Yourself at the Bar Without Having a Fool for a Client, which Judge Charlie K had given Gypsy a few years back. It was autographed by the author, none other than the judge himself. How to Represent Yourself had sold over two million copies and made Charlie rich. Now in his seventies and retired from the Vermont State Supreme Court, he presided over the local docket with a grandfatherly benignity, though he could still be tough on occasion—mainly with overreaching prosecutors and the local constabulary. Charlie made no bones about being a defendant’s judge. If a good old Kingdom boy or girl was guilty, the state had better be prepared to prove it.

  Ethan looked away from the snow outside the window to Exhibit One, leaning against the front panel of the judge’s bench. Exhibit One was a full-size stuffed whitetail buck with a handsome set of twelve-point antlers. Its hindquarters caved in, it was propped against the bench in a semi-sitting position.

  E.A. and Gypsy sat at the defense table in the front of the courtroom, to the right of the judge’s bench. On the left, at the prosecution’s table, sat Warden Kinneson. The warden was also sheriff’s deputy, village night constable, zoning administrator, dogcatcher, truant officer, and Judge Charlie Kinneson’s third cousin. Today he was wearing his green wool game warden’s jacket with its official insignia, even though the courtroom was very warm. Gypsy wore her Loretta Lynn coal-miner’s-daughter flour-sack dress. E.A. wore jeans, sneakers, and a Red Sox sweatshirt and cap. Judge Charlie wore a red L.L.Bean hunting shirt, neatly pressed slacks, and loafers. Warden Kinneson was bringing this case himself, as was customary with nonfelonies in Kingdom County. The court stenographer, a humorless woman named Yvette DeBainville, was poised to record the proceedings.

  “Your Honor,” the warden began. “I’m going to start here by requesting that this boy at the defense table with the female defendant remove his cap in the presence of the officers of the court.”

  “Leave it on,” Gypsy whispered to E.A.

  “What officers of the court are you referring to, warden?” Judge Charlie K inquired.

  “Why, I and you, Judge.”

  “Warden,” Charlie said, “this is an alleged violation of a fish and game law, not a murder trial. Furthermore, this is a country courtroom in northern Vermont, not Saint Peter’s Basilica. Finally, you are a part-time sheriff’s deputy and game warden, not an officer of this or any other court. State your case so I can get back to my ball game.”

  Warden Kinneson sighed. He stood up, shuffled some documents, and turned to Gypsy. “Miss Allen. Walking across the common this afternoon, I noted that the left front fender of your vehicle was dented in. Did you hit a deer?”

  “You bet I did,” Gypsy said.

  “When you hit that deer, Miss Allen. Did you go off the road?”

  “Did I ever,” Gypsy said. “Off the road and across the meadow almost all the way to the river before I nailed that sucker.” She gestured at the twelve-pointer with the collapsed rear end.

  “So you admit that in direct violation of”—the warden pulled out his book of fish and game regulations—“Statute Two-oh-one b—‘It is unlawful to take, shoot, net, snare, spear, jacklight or otherwise disturb protected species, except during the stated legal hunting season and hours, with an approved and registered weapon’—you ran down and injured this deer with your automobile.”

  “I admit no such thing. I hit a stuffed deer, on my own property, that you use to decoy and entrap law-abiding citizens. I knew the deer was stuffed and I did it to teach you a lesson. How can somebody possibly injure a dead deer?”

  “Moreover,” said the warden, “the deer, which was thrown through the air approximately thirty-five feet, landed in a stand of cut-down marijuana stalks left over from last year, one of which I confiscated and now produce as Exhibit Two.”

  Warden Kinneson put a plastic garbage bag containing the offending plant on the judge’s bench.

  “My invalid mother has permission to grow a modest amount of Cannabis in her medicinal herb garden to alleviate the pain and suffering caused by Bucky Dent and the Boston Red Sox,” Gypsy said. “Check it out.”

  In fact, Gran’s permission to grow marijuana had come not from the state or county but from the Student League for Legalizing the Propagation and Use of Cannabis, with headquarters in Missoula, Montana.

  “Now let me get this straight, cousin,” Charlie said. “You set up this stuffed quadruped down in Gran’s weed patch to bait Gypsy into going after it so you could arrest her. Is that right?”

  “I had very good reason to suspect her of jacking deer, Your Honor. What she did when she saw the buck was up to her. I didn’t make her run it down.”

  “Gypsy, why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words. You can sit down, deputy.”

  Gypsy didn’t tell everything that had led up to the fateful encounter with the deer in the meadow, but E.A. remembered it all very clearly. The trouble had started one evening several weeks before when he and Gypsy were out in Patsy Cline on an NFT—a nocturnal field trip—as part of his homeschooling. Gypsy was driving the back roads of Kingdom County, telling him the habits of various night-feeding animals, while he sat in the passenger seat holding the Battery Beam.

  Ahead of them, eyes appeared on the side of the road. Gypsy slowed down and handed E.A. some cotton to put in his ears. “Our hearing’s very precious, sweetie, almost as valuable as our eyesight.”

  As she pulled even with the animal, E.A. switched on the Beam. The floodlit deer trembled, peed in fright, but didn’t run. Gypsy got out of Patsy, leaving the motor running. It was always better to leave the motor running. E.A. handed out Grandpa Gleason’s 30.06. She rested it on the roof of the rig, found the transfixed deer in the scope, and blasted it to Kingdom Come. The explosion reverberated through the corridor of trees along the woods road. With the cotton in his ears E.A. felt it more than he heard it, felt the reverberation down through Patsy’s frame deep into his chest, as the deer collapsed in its tracks, shot through the heart and dead before it hit the ground.

  In less than sixty seconds they had bundled it up in Bill’s old overcoat and slouch hat and sat it upright in the front seat between them with just the tip of its snout sticking out between the turned-up coat collar and turned-down hat brim. That’s when the flashing blue lights of Deputy Warden Kinneson’s truck came up behind them.

  “I know that deer’s here somewhere,” the warden said after searching the rig for the third time. “You’re going to court, Gypsy Lee Allen.”

  “You can’t take us to court for jacking a deer without producing the deer,” Gypsy said. “Isn’t that right, Bill?”

  She gave the animal wedged between herself and E.A. a nudge. “Old Bill’s been drinking a little of his private shine,” she explained. “That’s why he fired the gun out the window. Celebrating.”

  “Celebrating,” the warden said, shining his powerful flashlight on the figure in Bill’s hat and coat. “It looks to me like he’s passed out altogether. Well, get him home. This time you were lucky.”

  By the following afternoon, word was all over town that Gypsy Allen had fooled Warden Kinneson into mistaking a dead jacked deer for Old Bill. Every place the warden went—the hotel dining room for his morning coffee, the barbershop, the post office, the courthouse lobby—men asked him if he’d stopped anybody in an overcoat lately. Or remar
ked that even Bill Applejack didn’t look that much like a deer. Or inquired if he’d seen anybody in a slouch hat, a fella with a long black nose. Or tipped an imaginary hat to him. So it was probably in a state akin to desperation that the warden borrowed the mounted deer from the hotel barroom, citing official county business, and set it up in the meadow one night while Gypsy and E.A. were off on a fishing expedition to the county hatchery, also presided over by the warden, who lived next door.

  They’d sneaked into the hatchery from the back side, and Ethan had boosted his mother over the wire fence, Gypsy trying not to giggle, and had gone directly to the long cement holding tank containing the warden’s prize brown-trout brood stock. Gypsy tossed a handful of dry dog food onto the surface, which instantly boiled with big trout.

  “Okay, hon,” she whispered. “Fling in.”

  Courtesy of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, aka Corporal Colin Urquahart, E.A. had a short steel casting rod, thirty-pound line, and a red-and-white spoon with three gang hooks, which Gypsy Lee’s RCMP client had confiscated from a poacher in Megantic, Quebec. E.A. flipped the spoon into the hatchery holding tank and cranked the reel once. Then something attacked the lure, something nearly large enough to yank the rod right out of E.A.’s hands. “Atta boy, Ethan, don’t give him any slack,” Gypsy said. “Good, good, you’ve got him coming your way, sweetie.” The trout jumped and fell back into the holding tank like a springer spaniel diving into the water for a duck, splashing them both all over.

  “Jesum Crow!” Ethan said. “That thing must weigh eight pounds.”

  “It’s probably a state record,” Gypsy said. “Oh, honey, get him just a little closer, I’ve got just the medicine.”

  E.A. reeled. With its dorsal fin out of the water, the fish swam toward the edge of the brood pen. E.A. backed up and dragged it onto the walkway above the tank. It came off the hook and started to flop back toward the water.

  Crack. The shot from Gypsy’s derringer rang into the night. The fish quivered, then lay still. “Quick, hon, grab it and run. Give me your pole.”

  Ethan held the dead fish—he figured it was closer to ten pounds—in both arms. As they made for the fence, a light came on at the warden’s house, a couple of hundred yards away. A floodlight illuminated the holding pens. E.A. heaved the fish up and over the fence, then he and Gypsy followed and raced down the hill into the woods. They jumped across the brook that ran out of the hatchery and cut through another patch of woods to the Late Great Patsy Cline, parked on a logging trace, headed downhill. E.A. threw the fish in back. It was nearly as long as the seat. Gypsy slid in behind the wheel while E.A. pushed Patsy to get her rolling. As she picked up momentum, he leaped in. Gypsy popped the clutch once, popped it twice. On the third try the engine engaged and they were off down the mountain.

  “That’s what I call fishing, hon,” Gypsy said. “We could have gotten our limit if Mr. State Record Brown Trout hadn’t come off the hook and I hadn’t had to plug him.”

  E.A. wondered what the limit for hatchery fish might be. Ten? Twelve? Twenty pounds?

  “The county shouldn’t confine fish like that, Ethan. It’s a very bad thing to do. Like keeping animals in a zoo. In the daylight their little fish eyes are so sad. This fish is much better off dead and about to be eaten. It won’t have to live in confinement anymore.”

  Speeding down the mountain, they began to laugh. When they were sure they weren’t being pursued, Gypsy pulled over and let E.A. drive, while she rode shotgun with the 30.06 and the Battery Beam in case they spotted another deer. Two deer in the larder were always better than one.

  E.A. loved to drive Patsy Cline. It made him feel very grownup and protective of Gypsy, the way a son should be. Nocturnal driving sessions were part of his homeschooling. Driver’s ed, Gypsy called it. E.A. was fairly sure he was the only eleven-year-old taking driver’s ed in the state of Vermont.

  As they approached Fenway and saw the reflection of the deer’s eyes, Gypsy working on the first line of “Caught in the Headlights,” a new song about a double-dealing two-timer, she knew immediately that something was wrong.

  “Hold on, sweetie pie, hold on here. Switch back.” They worked the switcheroo without stopping, E.A. sliding over her lap as she slid under the wheel, a neat maneuver they’d practiced before in case a cop stopped them during driver’s ed. Gypsy, now back in the driver’s seat, swung Patsy into the lane toward the meadow. The deer stood immobile.

  “Its eyes don’t shine right, hon,” Gypsy said. “It’s a setup. Take the clip out of the rifle. Gun safety always comes first, you know.”

  Gypsy was big on gun safety. She’d stressed to E.A. that any number of things could go wrong when you were handling high-powered weapons after dark in a speeding automobile. She’d actually made him take Warden Kinneson’s gun safety course for new hunters twice.

  Gypsy mashed down on the accelerator as they bounced across the Fenway infield. The Late Great Patsy Cline tipped up precariously when her right wheels ran over second base. They sped into the outfield, where the deer stood stock-still near Gran’s herb garden. Why doesn’t he run? E.A. wondered, holding the Battery Beam in one hand and the 30.06 in the other.

  Gypsy blasted the horn. “Am I head-on, Ethan?”

  “A tad to the right,” he said.

  “So, Gypsy,” Judge Charlie was saying, coughing hard, “you ran over a dead, stuffed deer on your own property?”

  “She just admitted that she did,” the warden said. “And was found with an illegally acquired ten-pound brown trout to boot. And the deer landed in an illegal substance. She broke about five, six laws. Maybe more.”

  “That depends on which laws the warden has in mind, Charlie,” Gypsy said. “Our Father’s laws or the trivial little technicalities in the warden’s fish and game book? Which Our Father didn’t think were important, or He’d have mentioned them to Moses or had Jesus tack them onto the Sermon on the Mount. Did the dear blessed Christ, after he divided the loaves and the fishes, say, ‘Now, folks, you can only take these particular fishes by rod and reel during the hours from half an hour before official sunrise to half an hour after official sunset’? Did Our Father announce, out of the burning bush, ‘Moses, old boy, thou shalt not take, shoot, net, snare, spear, jacklight, or otherwise disturb protected species except during the stated legal season and hours, with an approved and registered firearm’? I don’t think so. Moreover—you got a cold, Charlie? Gran has an herb that’s great for that nagging cough—moreover, Gran has permission from that outfit in Montana to grow her medicinal herb. Finally, the warden’s going to have to show me the regulation in his book that says it’s against the law, even man’s law, to kill a deer that’s already dead.”

  “Well, warden?”

  “I’d just like to ask the defendant—”

  “Cousin, for the last time, this is not a criminal trial and Gypsy Lee isn’t a defendant.”

  “I’d just like to ask Miz Allen here if she thinks it’s good parenting to take a young boy out jacklighting and have him hold the light?”

  “Yes, I do,” Gypsy said immediately. “First of all, we weren’t primarily out jacklighting. The main purpose of our little adventure was an educational field trip for E.A. to study the native fishes of Kingdom County. As for holding the light, it’s an Allen family tradition. I held the light for Gran back before Bucky Dent took her out of commission. She held the light for her pa, Outlaw Allen, and Outlaw held it for his pappy, Grandpa Gleason Allen before Grandpa Gleason went insane and tried to blow up the rest of the family in their beds. My great-great-great-great-grandfather down there”—she motioned out the window at the Colonel, standing cold in the snow—“held the light for his father. Only back then the light was a pine-link torch and it was moose and wolves they were after, not deer. They were WYSOTT Allens, too,” she added. “They just didn’t know it.”

  “Gypsy,” Judge Charlie said. “I’ve always wondered. What does WYSOTT stand for?”

  “Why, you ou
ght to know that, Charlie. It stands for Wrong Side of the Tracks Allens.”

  The judge smiled. “I guess I’d forgotten. What’s the Y for, though? Wrong side of the tracks doesn’t have a Y in it.”

  “Well, I’m not completely sure, but I think the Y got shoe-horned in there to make WYSOTT easier to say.”

  “Your Honor,” Warden Kinneson said, but Charlie held up his finger. The ceiling fans went around and around, the flat wooden blades moving just fast enough so that E.A. couldn’t follow them individually, though he bet Ted Williams could have. Ted could see the rotating seams on the ball coming up to the plate.

  On the windowsill the Sox game was still crackling. New York had gone ahead in the top of the ninth on a grand-slam home run. “Ethan?”

  E.A. jumped.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “When are you going down to Beantown to straighten those guys out?” The judge jerked his thumb toward the radio. “They need your help.”

  “Please, Your Honor—”

  “Hold your water, warden. What could possibly be so important that you have to interrupt a baseball conversation?”

  “I just wondered. What your ruling was?”

  “Well, I have been thinking about exactly that. Gypsy, I’m finding you guilty of killing a dead deer. The fine will be five dollars, waived, because”—looking at the game warden in a way that reminded E.A. of Ted on his poster, staring out at the rookie pitcher—“because I do not ever, ever, as long as I am the sitting judge in this courtroom, wish to preside over another case in which a citizen of Kingdom County has been entrapped into breaking the law. Furthermore, Gypsy, you have this court’s permission to shoot and consume any deer, live or dead, that you catch in Gran’s herbal garden, depriving her of medicinal solace for the pain and suffering caused by those sorry losers”—he nodded at the radio—“in ’seventy-eight, ’eighty-six, and ’ninety-four. What’s that, cousin? Stop mumbling and speak up.”

  “Well, since you ask, Judge, I was saying that this is an outrage. It’s a mockery of how a courtroom should be run. I’m going to complain to the judicial review panel.”